Measuring the mediating role of quality education for ensuring employability skills: An analysis of higher education student perception in Bangladesh

feel safe within my university campus." (45.5%). Thus, the hypothesis (H3), "Student percep- tion of physical aspects positively affects the employability skills of higher education stu- dents”, has been proven. [15] argued that as students from diverse settings are coming to receive education at HEIs, the administration should emphasise outcome-based teaching and learning to decrease the gap between exceptional and slacking students. This observation closely matches the findings of this study because, once again, the majority of respondents agreed to the items "My university encourages professionalism and helps me foster the neces- sary skills" (50%), “My university is reputable and has enough credibility among the aca- demic consensus” (52.6%), “My university is preparing me for a career of my choice” (39.1%), “The present curriculum design of my courses is coherent and clear to me” (56.4%), “Evaluation and assessment at my Institution is rigorous” (51.3%), and “My university actively involves students in their activities” (48.1%). Thus, the hypothesis (H4), "Student perception of Quality education positively affects the employability skills of higher education students", has been proven. In contrast, the study failed to support the direct effect of Course Structure (CS) and Institutional Policy (POL) on Quality Education (QE). However, it should be noted that the p-values of both CS and POL are above zero but positive; thus, the observed data does not provide strong evidence against the null hypothesis [62], which is why the correlation may

be positive against CS and POL. The findings provided by [16] in the Indian context indi- cated that content (Course Structure) had no significant difference in importance compared to other constructs when measuring student perception. Most respondents in this study agreed to the questions “The courses that I have taken are set to meet industry require- ments” (50.6%), “My courses help me to foster communication skills and teamwork” (50.6%), and “The knowledge I am gaining is flexible across industries” (57.1%). However, by measuring the student perception in the context of Bangladesh, CS does not directly affect QE. While several reasons can be attributed to this difference, a likely explanation may be that the students in Bangladeshi HEIs either did not understand the question or lacked the experience required to answer this question entirely. [63] also found positive cor- relations when measuring the student perception of course assessment (Course Structure) but also measured the apparent competence of the students to evaluate this, thus proving that other attributes had affected the findings. [7, 8] observed widespread unemployment, pointing directly towards the lack of industry-based curricula in most HEIs and the opposite of the relatively positive student perception of CS. Thus, the hypothesis (H1), "Student per- ception of course structure positively affects the employability skills of higher education stu- dents", has not been proven. Moreover [17], established that measuring program characteristics and effectiveness of

Institutional Policy was nuanced because it was essential to follow a ’quantity-over-quality’ approach, which was not possible for the scope of this paper to accomplish. Similarly, the respondents mostly agreed to the questions including “My university gives opportunities to students to work as assistants” (46.8%), “My university gives me training on real-world work experiences” (44.9%) and "My university provides me with the knowledge that will be effective in my work life" (43.6%). this is not reflected by the findings. Since the study was conducted within Bangladesh, POL did not directly affect QE. Most HEIs are not invested in giving the students practical experience in their respective fields, owing to the vast number of unem- ployed students in Bangladesh [7, 8]. In practical terms, HEI policies such as assistantships, as observed by [64], made more students confident and able to perform tasks properly after spe- cific assistantship roles than before, opposing the study’s findings. Thus, the hypothesis (H2), "Student perception of institutional policy positively affects the employability skills of higher education students", has not been proven. PLOS ONE Measuring the mediating role of quality education for ensuring employability skills PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0310815 October 7, 2024 12 / 18